Kauai Vacation

I took the dog out last night to poo, and she didn't quite finish. Sometimes, without going into too much detail, there is a blockage. She eats grass, and I try to stop her because I don't think it's good for her, but then someone told me that dogs eat grass because there is something up with their stomach and grass helps aid the digestive process. Last night, I also had to aid the digestive process with a makeshift doggie bag glove on my hand. For some reason, my dog doesn't like a finger up her butt, so this is kind of a difficult task. She was patient, though, and avoided any eye contact with me as I very slowly and carefully pulled a cylindrical mixture of grass, small sticks, hair and dogshit out of her. It was satisfying to get it all out in one step, so I proudly showed it to my wife through the window, and announced triumphantly, "look what I just pulled out of Hazel's ass." Then I remembered how fun and beautiful last week's vacation on Kauai was. Here are some pictures:

Hanapepe Bridge (which I called Haveapeepee resulting in this photo)

Bring on the hurricane

I planned on running the Kalalau trail on the Na Pali coast. It's a trail I've wanted to run for a long time, and each time I go to Kauai, I get a little closer to actually running the damn thing. This time I had a permit ready to go, and I had recruited my brother-in-law, Cameron, to run it with me. We were all set, the weather looked great the week before, I'd been reading trip reports and watching videos of the trail and with each one, I was getting more excited to get out on the 22-mile trail. Unfortunately, Hurricane Flossie hit Kauai the day of the hike. It didn't even really hit Kauai, aside from some wind, clouds, and a short rainstorm in the morning, there really wasn't any evidence of a hurricane, but it was enough that the Hawaiian Parks department closed the trail as a safety precaution.

I searched for an alternate hike and found the Powerline trail which is a steep, muddy 10-mile trail through the jungle on the north side of Kauai. Two of my brothers-in-law joined me on the hike/run, and it was a lot of fun. All the online descriptions of the hike describe it as a dry hike, which I interpreted as the hike isn't very wet, but during the hike I realized that it probably meant that the hike should be done in dry weather. We only had one car and a limited amount of time to get back to the family at the beach for a day of cutthroat kids' beach olympics competition, so we did 10 miles total on the trail. The first half was a long, slippery climb to the top, and as is usually the case, the views from the top of the mountain were worth it. We turned at the top and ran most of the way back down. By the end of the run, I had slipped and fallen about 5 times, was covered in mud, and a little of the sting of not being able to do the Kalalau trail had been washed away by the mountains. I was proud of Ryan and Cameron for joining me in the tough conditions. My favorite part of the run, of almost any run, was sharing the calm that comes from being outside surrounded by the beauty of nature.

My wife and I were also able to jump into a local race in Poipu. She did the 10K and took second in her age group, and I did the 10 mile and took first in the 40-49 division, so it was a good race for both of us.